Page 9 of Hellebore

She died in a car accident two months after I turned twelve. The official story said it was an accident, but I never believed it, even though there was never any proof of foul play.

My father destroyed everything she loved. Now I grow what he burned. An entire garden of black hellebore blooms behind the mansion walls: beautiful, deadly. A living monument to the only person who ever understood obsession.

Tonight, they will serve as both weapons and protection.

I drag the fucker through the backdoor and into the basement.

I strap Luke spread-eagle onto the reinforced oak table. The leather cuffs creak as I tighten them. He groans, eyelids fluttering. When his eyes finally focus and he sees me standing over him, pure terror floods his face.

“What the fuck? Where am I? Let me go!”

I walk slowly around the table, boots echoing on the stone floor.

“You touched Briar.” I say softly.

He actually laughs, a shaky, desperate sound. “Briar? Dude, she’s just a hook-up. I fuck her once in a while when I’m bored. That’s it. She’s nothing.”

Nothing.

The words detonate inside my chest.

Just a hook-up. Bored.

Rage surges through me so violently my vision tunnels. This worthless piece of shit used her like disposable trash. Kissed her neck. Groped her breast. Slid his fingers between her legs while she⁠—

I back-hand him hard. Blood sprays across the oak.

“She is not a hook-up!” I growl, my voice trembling with six years of pure hell and obsession. “She is my salvation. The only thing that can drag me out of the abyss I was born into. I would carve my own heart out and lay it at her feet if she asked. She has belonged to me since the first second I laid eyes on her… and you will die knowing that she was never yours to touch.”

I turn to the small steel table and pick up the vial of hellebore tincture I distilled from my garden. The liquid is dark as old blood, thick with the concentrated poison of roots, leaves, and black petals. My mother was right. This flower protects what is mine.

I pinch Luke’s nose shut and pour the bitter dose down his throat. He chokes and thrashes, but I clamp my hand over his mouth until he swallows every drop.

“What the fuck did you give me?” he gasps, coughing violently.

I sit in the wooden chair beside the table and watch. Calm. Patient. The monster inside me finally fed.

Almost an hour passes before his screams begin to fracture. His breathing shifts, turning shallow and frantic, each inhale a wet rattle in the freezing basement air. Sweat beads across his forehead and runs in thick trails down his temples despite the cold that seeps from the stone walls and floor.

“The walls,” he gasps, voice cracking into a broken sob. “They’re breathing. Moving. No—no, they’re not walls anymore. They’re guts. Wet guts sliding against each other.”

His eyes bulge wide, darting wildly around the dim space. Sweat pours down his face in streams, mixing with the blood already drying at the corners of his mouth.

“Guts dripping. Red. Everything is red.”

I lean closer, my voice low and steady in the heavy silence between his gasps. “Tell me more, Luke. What do you see?”

“They’re opening,” he chokes out, panic sharpening every word. “Teeth. There’s teeth. Eyes—too many eyes, black, watching me.”

His body jerks hard against the thick leather straps holding him to the heavy oak table. The wood groans under the force as a raw scream tears from his throat.

“It’s coming! No—no—get away from me!”

The words tumble over one another, slurred and desperate. “Teeth covered in blood. The walls are moving, reaching. Please—help me!”

His head slams back against the table with a dull crack. Spit flies from his lips as his chest heaves violently. “The beast. It’s here. It sees me. It knows.”

I bring my face inches from his, studying the terror twisting his features. “It knows what you did, does it not?”